My name is Stephanie and Iím excited about joining this forum. Iím hoping to participate in discussions about some of my passions: food and personal growth.

My partner and I are a somewhat feisty couple of 40-something food lovers who have been in need of a lifestyle shift somethiní fierce. She is an amazing cook (not her profession, but could easily be!) who woke up to realize that sheíd gained enough weight to want to make a change for her health now and in the future. Without compromising flavor. Period. Itís not going to happen for that chickie.

Iím the writing half of our team. Iíve started a blog to document our weight loss journey, and Iíve seen online that there seem to be a gazillion of these kinds of blogs, which is really cool. Iím also an energy healer and holistic nutritionist, and Iíve been trying to get my better half to cook more healthfully for years, especially since she Iím not a very good cook. Baking Ė okay. Cooking, not so much.

Now that sheís gotten on board with the food and fitness part of things, we have the best of both worlds. Iíve also dealt with emotional eating for the majority of my life, and as a result of this personal work, have a lot of insights about this!

So here we are, on this journey with all of you, hoping to reach our goals. I look forward to learning from all of you and bringing anything I can to the table too.

Welcome Stephanie + partner,
I too love good food and both my DH and I are great cooks. In my experience being a great cook is a huge bonus for changing the food lifesyle. Since you are familiar with trying new things and knowing how great flavors can enhanse even the most humble dishes you should be well on you way to improving the "calorie in" side of the equation. As the saying goes: Weight loss begins in the kitchen.

The tricky part comes with portion control (for me at least). I can certainly eat a lot more than I need to keep my body fueled so I've had to learn how to stop with 1 serving, or go light on the carby dishes and heavy on the veggies.

The second part of the equation "calories out" means picking up the exercise habit. There are lots of tips and life experiences here on the blog. Check out the exercise section and hop on in to the women's corner. We look forward to getting to know you! :D

Kathy13118

08-21-2012 08:52 PM

Ditto about the portion control. I learned quickly making custom entries for food in nutritiondata.self.com that all I needed to do was enter all the ingredients for a dish, then change 4 servings to 6 servings and suddenly, the dish wasn't as caloric as it first seemed. Smaller portions!